Summary: A lecture on the 28th of this month at Chaos Computer Club (CCC) to cover software and business method patents
AT its very core (since inception), Techrights is a site against software patents. There is a big patents lobby which extends from the US into Brussels and in recent days we saw that boosters of software patents are now trying to frame computer programs as machines ("as such") in order to bypass Alice.
Those among our readers (some of whom asked me to present at CCC, which is far away), especially those who live in Germany, might wish to attend
this talk on Monday. Iga BaÃ
âos, Józef Halbersztadt and Benjamin Henrion (known online as "zoobab") will present. It is very much relevant to the
EPO because, as we have shown here for years, there have been growing efforts to
patent software in Europe. Lobbyists of that agenda often were
front groups of large US corporations, which really speaks volumes.
In the field of software, not patents drive innovation but a free (liberal) exchange of code (and ideas) drives innovation. The same applies to some other fields and to quote
this very recent article: "Does scientific research drive innovation? Not very often, argues Matt Ridley: Technological evolution has a momentum of its own, and it has little to do with the abstractions of the lab" (or paperwork pertaining to algorithms).
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